People walk in a line next to traffic as they depart Nigerian capital, Abuja, on March 30, 2020, to neighboring states after President Muhammadu Buhari called for a lockdown to limit the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. (Photo by AFP)

A French doctor who suggested that a possible treatment for the new coronavirus should be tested in Africa has apologized in the wake of widespread backlash on social media triggered by his comments.

Jean-Paul Mira, the head of the intensive care unit at the Cochin hospital in Paris, made the racism-tinted remarks during an interview on the French television channel LCI while discussing coronavirus trials set to be launched in Europe and Australia to see if the BCG tuberculosis vaccine could be used to treat the virus.

“It may be provocative. Should we not do this study in Africa where there are no masks, no treatment or intensive care?” Mira said in the interview, adding, “We try things because we know that they are highly exposed and they don’t protect themselves.”

Camille Locht, research director at France's national health institute, Inserm, agreed with Mira during the program and responded by saying, "You are right. And by the way, we are thinking of in parallel about a study in Africa using this same approach."

Mira’s comments were met with swift backlash on social media.

"Africa isn't a testing lab," former Ivorian professional football player Didier Drogba wrote on Twitter, adding, "I would like to vividly denounce those demeaning, false and most of all deeply racist words."

It is totally inconceivable we keep on cautioning this.
Africa isn’t a testing lab.
I would like to vividly denounce those demeaning, false and most of all deeply racists words.

Olivier Faure, of France's Socialist Party, slammed the remarks and said in a tweet, "It's not provocation, it's just racism. Africa is not the laboratory of Europe. Africans are not rats!"

Le Club des avocats au Maroc, a Moroccan lawyers' collective, said it was suing Mira for racial defamation.

Mira apologized in a statement published by his employer, the Paris network of hospitals, saying, “I want to present all my apologies to those who were hurt, shocked and felt insulted by the remarks that I clumsily expressed on LCI this week.”

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Mira further clarified and said, "Africa could be even more exposed to serious forms of harm because there will be so few masks and little confinement because of societal structure."

"It seemed interesting to me that in addition to France and Australia, an African country could participate in this study which I had never heard of before hearing about it on the show," he added.

The coronavirus, which causes a respiratory disease known as COVID-19, jumped from wildlife to people in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year and has currently affected more than 200 countries across the globe. It has so far infected more than 1,288,000 people and killed over 70,000, according to a running count by worldometers.info.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.

Africa is currently the least-affected continent, with nearly 7,500 confirmed cases of infection and about 320 fatalities.

French doctor’s remarks ‘shocking’

Patrick Lawrence, an American author and essayist, censured the French doctor’s remarks as “shocking,” and said in a phone interview with Press TV on Monday that Mira’s idea was rooted in a reality enjoyed by the Western nations, which “cannot transcend their own self-interests.”

“The remarks of the French doctor are quite revealing of a reality no one particularly wants to speak of in the West. We are all in this together it is said, but on the ground, in practice day to day, we are not all in this together,” Lawrence told Press TV.

“Plainly, what the French doctor had to say was quite openly racist and shocking. One would hear such a remark in public or indeed in private these days but it reveals the reality that the Western nations cannot transcend their own self-interests,” he added.

Lawrence went on to say that, “Among the Western nations, you don't see too many Western nations reaching out to others... when it comes to a crisis the European Union proves meaningless."

“We in the West do not appear to be able to transcend our ordinary self-interests as dictated by our neo-liberal economic systems, our devotion to markets and so on. It's a great pity and it's going to cost many lives,” the American essayist concluded.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses: